Incubated with no water for 18 days! Success!

[Sharisr32]

I killed a 1,000 or so eggs trying to use water and finally started dry hatching and average about 90 % I had to figure out the rules aren't laws rofl It is more a house to house adjustment to find out what works for you .

 

[ChickenCrazed]

Quote:
Hmmmmm....I am rethinking this humidity issue...I live on the Ohio/Pa Border also...I have not had good hatches in my Hovabator incubator at all...I am getting ready to chuck it!...Wonder if I should try a few eggs in it without the water and see if the dry hatch works for me...I get much better results using my R-Com 20...This gets so frustrating!...I just hatched some Silkie babies and lost a lot of eggs in that Hovabator!...Grrrrrrr.....

 

[perolane]

I'm in Louisiana too Cochin...I use no or very little water. I try to keep it around 30% the first 18 days & it doesn't take much water added to bump it up to 65% for hatching. Works great for me!

 

[Coldweatherbirds]

We burn wood also, and I am "dry hatching" in Maine. (I did add a squirt of water every couple of days to make the humidity stay over 20%, but it has climbed up to 40% the last 48 hours of it's own accord. This is my first try and I'm on day 15. Things seem to be going well. We'll know at hatch date!

 

[jenlynn4]

thats awesome!

 

[ajacskr]

My first 3 hatches I worried myself to death over the humidity, and would up with about 50% hatch rates.

My incubators are in the the utulity room in the basement with the washer and dryer. We have electric heat.

I have dual Temp/Humidity guages in the bators. In December I started "Dry" hatching and my humidity stays right around 35% for the first 18 days, then on lock down I fill all the troughs to the rim and jump the humidity to about 85% Then by hatch time it is back down to about 70%.

Everytime I open to get chicks out I have a spray bottle with warm water in it and spray the eggs just to keep the humidity up.

My last hatch resulued in 7 out of 10 hatching. Right now I have 58 locked down using the same method.

I finaly decided not to worry and it seems to take care of its self. Once I got the temps on the incubators close to where they needed to be I dont fiddle with them anymore. Have had temps swing all the way from 96 degrees to 102 and it does not seem to hurt anything.

Happy Hatching to everyone.

 

[mmaddie's mom]

Quote:
Very encouraging... thanks!

 

[Chic-n-farmer]

I had a power outage that lasted 53 hours. It occured on the third day of incubation for the chicks I successfully hatched (eggs 2 weeks into incubation were killed by the outage).

Humidity stayed at 20% for the first stage and I raised it to 50-55% during "lock down". I had 10 out of 11 chicks hatch.

 

[youngbiddy]

I've been keeping my humidity around 35% the whole time and the air cells I've seen (just candled a few at random yesterday, day 15) were slightly larger than a quarter. I was startled by their size, actually, and added water to bring it up to 40% for the last few days before lockdown. All the eggs I looked at had filled in completely except for the large air sac, so they'd all grown since I candled them on day 10. Now I'm worried it was too dry after worrying that they'd drown at pipping from being too wet...

 

[Patchesnposies]

This humidity thing is really a trial and error type thing. I live in the high desert of NM, where it is incredibly dry. I have found that I have to work hard to keep the humidity at 55% to 65% during incubation and up to 75% at lockdown,l when the chicks start hatching the humidity goes up on its own....if it get above 85% I have to open the holes on the top of my still air hova or LG's.

I have had a lot of dried out chicks and through trial and error found that this works for us. It amazes me when I read about dry hatches!